If you pay attention to the MAGA New Right, you will notice a pattern whereby their premier thinkers often wax allegorical about the liberal order in terms that echo Plato’s image of the cave. The names they confer upon liberal democracy are varied and motley: We hear of the “administrative state” and the “managerial elite,” the Cathedral, Longhouse, Gynocracy, and Davoisie. Postliberals like Patrick Deneen and Adrian Vermeule speak of “Liberalocracy” and “Sacramental Liberalism”; others of the “Negative World” or simply the “Regime.” But from these various right-wing factions, you will hear a chorus of red-pilled agreement: The liberal democratic way of life is emasculating and unholy, hypocritical, socially corrosive, and unstable. Perhaps above all else, it is dishonest: “They are lying hypocrites!” the chorus exclaims.
Into this counter-revolutionary fray waltzes the political theorist Alexandre Lefebvre, with his wonderfully unconventional book, Liberalism as a Way of Life. Lefebvre, originally from Canada and now based in Australia, is not writing for America’s New Right reactionaries, but their arguments clearly inform and shape the book, and presumably he is hoping to reach some of their audience, too. But this is the rare and refreshing book about liberalism that does not seem secretly intimidated by the Right. Lefebvre hears the right-wing chorus, acknowledges the truth of some of what they have to say, and then moves on to defending liberalism on his own terms and providing some inoculation juice against the illiberal red pill. For reasons that I will get into, Liberalism as a Way of Life is not the book that I would have written about liberalism, but I am so glad that liberals have this work from him.
Lefebvre hears the right-wing chorus, acknowledges the truth of some of what they have to say, and then moves on to defending liberalism on his own terms.
Concessions of a Liberal
Lefebvre, refreshingly, makes a number of concessions to liberalism’s critics right upfront. He concedes that liberalism does dominate modern Western societies; he concedes that liberalism is not neutral but rather is its own form of regime in the classical sense: its values constitute our broader civic values, impact us as citizens, and help make us into the people we are. Lefebvre uses a water metaphor to convey the point: Liberalism is, as the title of chapter 1 puts it, “the water we swim in”—to the point where the younger fishes among us take it entirely for granted and have trouble recognizing that the water even exists. “Liberal principles, values, and sensibilities,” Lefebvre writes, “have become so pervasive as to be mistaken for common sense and even human nature” (12-13). In other words, he acknowledges, we live in a liberal cave: “Its ideals and sensibilities are indeed omnipresent in the public and background culture of Western democratic societies” (13).
Lefebvre’s other big move is to concede that there is much about cave liberalism that is bad: he even has his own name, “liberaldom,” for the pathological version. Liberaldom may indeed be bad, but that doesn’t mean you should give up on the real thing. For Lefebvre, the fact that liberalism isn’t fully neutral is not such a big deal. But the fact that liberals don’t live up to their own ideals—the fact of genuine hypocrisy—is a real problem, and Lefebvre gives it its due.
The fact that liberals don’t live up to their own ideals—the fact of genuine hypocrisy—is a real problem, and Lefebvre gives it its due.
His “liberaldom” frame is inspired by the Danish philosopher and theologian Søren Kierkegaard’s notion of (faux) “Christendom.” He explains the parallels in chapter 6, “Pretend Liberals in a Pretend Liberal World.” In the 1800s, Kierkegaard wrote scathing critiques of the Christians and clerics of his era, who failed miserably to live up to the demands of the faith, and in so doing perpetuated a false or synthetic version of Christianity. “Compared with the Christianity of the New Testament,” Kierkegaard wrote (and Lefebvre quotes), “[Christendom] is play acting at Christianity… [W]hat does it mean to play? It means to counterfeit, to mimic a danger where there is no danger, and in such a way that the more art one applies to it the more deceptively one can pretend as if there were danger.” Lefebvre summarizes the point: “This is a world of deceit, self-deceit, and sanctimony that mocks the truth it is built on” (116).
Liberaldom, Lefebvre writes, “is liberalism com-promised, in both senses of the word: a settlement between itself and other ideologies and a lowering of its standards.
Liberaldom is not so different; there are reasons why terms like Cathedral, Longhouse, and Liberalocracy exist. Liberaldom, he writes, “is liberalism compromised, in both senses of the word: a settlement between itself and other ideologies and a lowering of its standards. Liberaldom, we could say, is the craven capitulation to unliberal values that threaten to destroy your and my spirit.” Lefebvre holds up the possibility of a liberalism beyond Liberaldom. He wants liberals to be better: to learn to be good liberals in a world where there are so few. This is a very unusual way for a liberal to write and speak about liberalism, but it captures what is actually at stake. And Lefebvre is adamant: “That we live in liberaldom and not liberalism is obvious,” he writes, before rattling off a good list of liberalism’s pathologies and deformations.
Lefebvre’s standard for judging all of this is Rawlsian: at its core, liberalism aims to be “a fair system of cooperation.” And it is falling short on every front, even when liberals and Democrats are at the helm. He recommends a short clip produced by the New York Times called “Liberal Hypocrisy Is Fueling American Inequality.” Liberals are failing to live—or govern—according to their values, and the result is inequality, dysfunction, and polarization. Late in the book, Lefebvre writes: “We so often exacerbate [polarization] by claiming a monopoly on correct opinion. Bad for our society and bad for us, we fuel a culture that betrays who we claim and aspire to be” (232).
What Went Wrong?
Given the current state of affairs, the temptation for many political theorists is to blame John Rawls, the premier liberal theorist of the 20th Century. As someone who spent most of my academic life studying with Straussians, who tend to view Rawls with disdain, I am certainly subject to this temptation. To me, Rawls’ work was always too arid and narrow to sustain my own personal interest, let alone justify the current world order. I wanted to read Plato and Nietzsche, psychologize, and think about the grand sweep of history; “justice as fairness” didn’t stand a chance. Even though I valued liberal democracy, it seemed clear to me that it needed different, and better, champions.
Here Lefebvre thwarted my expectations, in part by articulating in precise terms the way in which Rawlsian thought has been to blame, and in part by doing his part to resuscitate dimensions of Rawls that so many of us fail to appreciate.
To be sure, Lefebvre’s main purpose in the book is not to address or appease liberalism’s critics, but he situates his work within a historical trajectory that helps us to understand where liberalism has faltered. And part of his argument is that liberalism has failed by conceding too much ground to opponents and outsiders, thereby weakening its own sense of positive vision and purpose. It is a move addressed as much to critics coming from the left, like Domenico Losurdo (who would have us acknowledge liberalism’s flawed legacy more forthrightly), as well as critics from the right like Patrick Deneen (who argues that liberalism was doomed from the start). Lefebvre joins Helena Rosenblatt and others like Josh Cherniss in uncovering the moral and ethical valences of earlier liberalisms, and joins Samuel Moyn and others in questioning the neoliberal and libertarian turns among so-called classical liberals. But for me, one of the most captivating portions of the book were where Lefebvre took on Rawls’ legacy.
Lefebvre’s main purpose in the book is not to address or appease liberalism’s critics, but he situates his work within a historical trajectory that helps us to understand where liberalism has faltered.
Liberalism as a Way of Life is in some respects a paean to Rawls: Lefebvre is an impassioned and loyal student of his, and he seems determined to present a Rawls, to borrow a phrase, made young and beautiful. That such a rehabilitation is necessary is thanks to two parallel phenomena related to the legacy: Today, liberalism is way more pervasive than in Rawls’ time, while at the same time being much less known to us.
Lefebvre places some of the blame for this situation at Rawls’ feet and seeks to save the early Rawls from the shadows cast by his elder self. From the perspective of political theory, he seeks to revive portions of A Theory of Justice in a world that has been too enthralled by Political Liberalism. Political Liberalism was a book that sought to expand the appeal of liberal democracy in part by narrowing and minimizing the ethical demands it makes on citizens, all the better to accommodate a broader plurality. Lefebvre’s point is not that this framework was bad; rather, he argues that the later book served up an unnecessarily narrow version of liberalism for liberals qua liberals. Unlike A Theory of Justice, it failed to endorse, let alone inspire, a liberal way of life. The “ideal (of the liberal person),” writes Lefebvre, “is comprehensive, and covers many aspects of our character and the kind of life we want to lead; the second ideal (of the liberal citizen) is limited by comparison, and concerns only how we see ourselves in our capacity as members of liberal democracy.” Rawls’ later work was emphatic that a liberal theory of justice need not be tied to any specific worldview, and as a matter of history, the distinctively liberal worldview got subsequently sacrificed along the way.
Political Liberalism, explains Lefebvre, was written for people who didn’t see themselves as liberal, and made serious accommodations for moral and religious pluralism. But this focus on citizenship meant leaving liberals to fend ethically for themselves. Lefebvre echoes Katrina Forrester, whose own book on Rawlsian liberalism “tells a ghost story, in which Rawls’ theory lived on as a spectral presence long after the conditions it described were long gone” (71). Lefebvre agrees, at least as concerns political liberalism, which he argues has become the lingua franca of the field.
The results, as Lefebvre describes it, are shocking, but certainly ring true: Thanks in part to the success of political liberalism, “contemporary political philosophy has nothing to say about how best to live.” Political liberalism obfuscates our reality in two distinctive ways. First, it obscures the growing pervasiveness of liberal ideals and sensibilities: “The firewall that political liberalism draws between comprehensive doctrines and a liberal political conception obscures this changed landscape” (80-81). Second, but perhaps more importantly, it positively preempts liberal moral self-understanding: “The philosophers best placed to tell us who we are not only have designed a theory that does not say, but, to rub salt into the expectation, too, patiently explain why the request is beyond the remit of political philosophy” (81). In other words, the liberal political frame is so committed to moral pluralism that it all but denies ethics and philosophy as proper subjects for liberals. What a mess.
The Liberal Way of Life
Lefebvre’s diagnosis of the problem of contemporary liberalism—or at least of contemporary liberal philosophy—is as compelling as any I have heard, and it sets him up well to take on one slice of the project of liberal renewal that he endorses. As he observes, “The perfectionist and progressivist impulses of liberalism can—and indeed must—be redeemed if liberalism is to believe in itself again, attract a new generation of partisans, and reclaim the verve and futurity it once had.” (119). But that is a very big and broad project, and Lefebvre’s book is more targeted. He is not trying to widen the liberal tent, refute critics, or even convert his readers to liberalism. Rather, he is writing a work of “self-help for liberals in liberaldom” (119).
Lefebvre recognizes that, despite the extent to which our world is dominated by liberalism, liberals themselves are adrift, without good champions and role models, and without the chance for genuine self-understanding. “We who are liberal all the way down,” he writes, “lack adequate models to understand how we came to be who we are” (82). He wants to help remedy that by rehabilitating liberalism as a comprehensive way of life, and putting it on a more self-aware, solid footing. Lefebvre’s audience for the book is people he categorizes as “liberals all the way down.” That is, people who have been brought up in liberal culture and identify with liberalism but don’t really understand it and could use some principles, rituals, and forms to hold on to.
Lefebvre wants to help adrift liberals by rehabilitating liberalism as a comprehensive way of life, and putting it on a more self-aware, solid footing.
In this, Lefebvre’s approach is still deeply Rawlsian, since he is working squarely within a broadly liberal purview. He is moving up from the liberal ground and monoculture to make the liberal cave visible to his fellow liberals, and then to take a tour of its best features and virtues. Liberalism is the water we swim in, which makes it hard to know, but it has a lot to recommend it: “Dive in,” writes Lefebvre. “The water is just fine.”
Lefebvre borrows from the French philosopher Pierre Hadot to articulate what it means to even have a way of life in the sense he means it, and then uses lesser-known passages from Rawls—with a focus on Part 3 of A Theory of Justice—to provide a portrait of liberal life and norms. The second half of Liberalism as a Way of Life is, as he puts it at one point, a trip into the deep end of the liberal waters.
This part of the book is fun to read, and Lefebvre’s easy-going liberal spirit shines bright. He makes the kind of bold moral claims for liberalism that most liberals shy away from, at one point arguing, for example, that the liberal way of life is “a free and generous way of being that rivals aristocracy in quality and ambition” (129). Lefebvre includes many charming anecdotes from popular culture to illustrate the easygoing and likeable effects of liberalism; he introduces us to Mike from the Borat movie, whose chill tolerance and acceptance of Borat he rightly praises as an underappreciated product of liberalism. He pitches various liberal values (liberals care about reciprocity, the free self, the fair self, and so forth); he writes a pleasing chapter called “Seventeen Reasons to Be Liberal”; and he devotes three additional chapters to spiritual exercises and “soulcraft for liberals.”
Though in some respects these latter were slightly too rooted in Rawlsian thought for my (admittedly prejudiced) tastes, Lefebvre succeeded in making me see the original position in new light, taught me to respect the notion of “reflective equilibrium,” and revealed Socratic dimensions of Rawls’ thought that I had never seen before. For example, he at times speaks in terms of liberal integralism and of the “desire to live more integrally,” which to me sounds deeply Socratic. And he explains how Rawls frequently naturalized theological concepts—in part because liberalism has its origins in these other traditions—in order to “reclaim ideas that religion unduly stakes a monopoly over.” That I did not know. I also appreciated his presentation of the Rawlsian notion of “public reason.” Lefebvre writes that as liberals we can “listen with the ears of public reason to hear the reasonableness of other ways of being in the world” (230). He calls such listening “the spiritual exercise of public reason,” and claims that three existential perks will follow from its practice: delight in others, a live-and-let-live attitude of tolerance, civility, and cheerfulness.
Ultimately, Lefebvre succeeds in rehabilitating lost facets of Rawls. While I might have wished for a book slightly less tethered to that ur-liberal philosopher, my view of Rawls has softened in reading Lefebvre. Furthermore, I can vouch for Lefebvre’s claim that liberalism’s radicalism can sneak up on a person, and that “conversion can be a slow and gradual process—one in which, day by day, we work to effect the change we want to become.” That has certainly been my experience of liberalism over time.
Cave Liberalism?
I am probably not Lefebvre’s target audience, since I have been thinking in terms of the liberal “cave” my entire adult life. But I laud his work and hope that it inspires many other volumes devoted to liberal culture and soulcraft.
I also have some criticisms. These are perhaps unfair to what Lefebvre set out to do, but worth articulating nonetheless, since they pertain to our broader political landscape and the future of liberalism within it. My concerns are threefold.
I wonder if Lefebvre isn’t exaggerating liberalism’s hegemony. Some of us are marinating in liberalism; others are marinating in their rage against it. These things are both real.
First, I wonder if Lefebvre isn’t exaggerating liberalism’s hegemony. While he is well aware of the challenges posed by the various illiberalisms of our time, I’m not sure he sufficiently acknowledges their cultural valences—perhaps because the power of illiberalism exists outside of the national liberal enclaves that are most accessible and familiar to liberals like him (and me). Illiberal cultural power is not so much in the universities or the sitcoms Lefebvre prefers, but it is out there: on Fox News and Joe Rogan, at CPAC and NatCon, and in the mega-churches and on the charismatic circuit. Liberalism dominates popular culture and Hollywood, but there are other cultures and hegemonic spaces all around us: they are just invisible to liberals because our world is so fragmented and dispersed. Some of us are marinating in liberalism; others are marinating in their rage against it. These things are both real.
If I am right in this first concern, then it might mean that this is the worst possible time to minimize the importance of political liberalism: Now more than ever, we need to defend liberalism as hyper-tolerant, accommodating, and pluralistic. Which is perhaps only to say that Lefebvre’s defense of a liberal way of life must be made in conjunction with a powerful defense of political liberalism.
I have come to realize that my own attachment to liberalism is related to its commitment to deep pluralism. I like the liberal democratic cave because it is technicolor and multifarious, full of possibilities—not because it teaches me how best to live.
Ultimately, though, I believe the disagreements might run deeper. In reading Lefebvre’s book and in reflecting on liberalism in recent years, I have come to realize that my own attachment to liberalism is related to its commitment to deep pluralism. For me, liberalism is valuable because it makes an open promise to the wild differences of humanity, allowing people to live differently, explore new ways of life, commit to things their parents hate, and live together despite different and conflicting deep commitments. You can be a trad wife or a witch, or queer, fascist, or Quaker, and still be tolerated as a rights holder in a liberal polity. I like the liberal democratic cave because it is technicolor and multifarious, full of possibilities—not because it teaches me how best to live. To me, preserving the possibility of wild difference—and the contestation that it inevitably brings—matters more than articulating and defending liberalism as a comprehensive worldview.
The liberal cave is better than the rest because it offers what most antiliberals can’t even seem to imagine: the possibility of self-directed freedom in a world of genuine choice. You can take the red pill again and again, but it won’t get you that. Lefebvre’s book shows that liberalism can take people somewhere good and decent; I want a cave that might still let us free.
Laura K. Field is a writer and political theorist in Washington, DC, and a Senior Advisor to the Illiberalism Studies Program. Her book Furious Minds: The Making of the MAGA New Right is forthcoming from Princeton University Press in Fall 2025. She can be found online at: @lkatfield, @lkatfield.bsky.social
